UPDATED 6/2/2019 at 2:15 p.m. ET: Neymar has denied accusations of rape, BBC reports.
After the news emerged, the soccer player’s management released a statement, criticizing “the unjust accusations and, above all, the exposure in the press of an extremely negative situation.” The statement also said that Neymar has been the “victim of an attempted extortion” and that “evidence of attempted extortion and non-rape will be submitted to the police authorities.”
Neymar responded to the allegations in a seven-minute video on Instagram, alongside a caption in Portuguese that reads, “Due to extortion, I'm being forced to expose my life and my family.”
Speaking in Portuguese in the video, he said, “I'm very upset but from now on I'll expose or tell all about what happened with that girl. It was an intimate thing but I have to open myself up to prove that nothing exceptional happened.”
“What happened that day was a relationship between a man and a woman, within four walls, like with any couple," he continued. "And the next day nothing much happened. We kept exchanging messages. She asked me for a souvenir for [her child].”
In the video, he also claimed he has a thread of WhatsApp messages with the woman, which includes images of her in her underwear. He said he shared them with the public to “prove that nothing really happened.”
See original story below.
Neymar has been accused of sexual assault, according to police documents obtained by the Associated Press.
An unidentified Brazilian woman claims the professional footballer raped her last month at a hotel in Paris, France, where Neymar plays for Paris Saint-Germain. The woman said she began communicating with the 27-year-old athlete via Instagram, and that his representative had booked her a plane ticket and hotel room so that she could meet Neymar face-to-face.
On the night of May 15, Neymar allegedly showed up to the woman's hotel room apparently drunk. The document, which was filed Friday in Sao Paulo states, the woman and Neymar had "touched each other, but in a given moment Neymar became aggressive and, with violence, had sexual intercourse against the victim’s will."
Text messages also show that the woman left Paris and returned to Brazil two days after the alleged assault. She said she did not file a complaint in Paris because she was too shaken.
Authorities are now conducting an investigation into the woman's claims. Neymar nor the PSG have publicly commented on the report; however, the athlete's father, Neymar, Sr., insists his son was set up.
"If public opinion is not cleared up, and if we can’t show the truth rapidly, this will snowball," Neymar, Sr., told dos Santos told TV Band. "If we have to show Neymar’s WhatsApps and the conversations with this girl, we will, because it is clear that it was a trap."
